In May of 2015Jodi Gillette (Bush Fellow, 2002) stepped down from her position as a White House senior policy advisor to take on the same role in a private capacity for Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Endreson & Perry, LLP, a national law firm “devoted to representing Native American interests in a variety of legal areas.” Although this was not mentioned in the national media, this recent maneuver exposes the allegiances and alliances of those who are leaders in the Standing Rock opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Previous to her current position in the private sector, Gillette, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, was hired by Obama for the United States to oversee statewide operations of the First American voting efforts (the North Dakota First American Vote campaign) in 2008. Following this, Gillette served as Associate Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House between 2009 t0 2010. Subsequently, Gillette joined the U.S. Department of the Interior as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in 2011 and was named Special Assistant to the President for Native American Affairs in the White House Domestic Policy Council in 2012. [Source]

“Jodi Gillette, a senior policy advisor, and her family pose with President Barack Obama.” Courtesy White House

Unbeknownst to the general public, Jodi Gillette’s full name is Jodi Archambault Gillette – sister of David Archambault – elected as Chairman of the Standing RockTribal Council on September 25, 2013. Although these conflicting relationships between elite power structures and the land defenders on the frontlines is rather glaring, it is omitted by all media. As media serves as a key apparatus in insulating elite power, one can safely assume this is a deliberate omission rather than a simple oversight.

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About the series:

“In crushing detail and shining a floodlight on the history of the co-optation of Indigenous struggles since the pivotal year of 2010, Cory Morningstar has put together this series to give deep context to the events at and around Standing Rock. Most vitally, this series contrasts the tiny amounts of money spent at the grassroots against the vast sums spent at the ‘business’ end of the non-profit industrial complex where personal data helps behavior-change B-corporation executives exercise the will of corporate philanthropists, corporations, and imperialist governments.

In this “age of peak spectacle” Morningstar and Forrest Palmer present the invisiblization of crude-via-rail and the manipulations of Warren Buffett and his BNSF empire while showing that not all water is treated as precious, not all pipelines get scrutiny, and not all Indigenous land needs to be treated as sacred if it doesn’t serve the interests of the non-profit industrial complex and those brands that maximize profits through Dave Matthews concerts. You will find stunning passages of clarity in each of part of this series which includes indispensable details of political context and networked hegemony for any true fireball activist.” — Activist Michael Swifte

[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found onWrong Kind of Green,The Art of Annihilation andCounterpunch. Her writing has also been published byBolivia RisingandCambio,the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. You can support her independent journalism via Patreon.]